"He came here and followed ’Licia and me to town one morning on the train. He watched for me till I came out of lecture and then he spoke to me." "What did he say?" "Oh, asked whether I’d forgotten him, took me to lunch and told me you gave him a rotten deal—took his children away from him—sent him into exile, and so on." "Didn’t he tell you that he deserted your mother and you three children and that your mother died of it?" "No," said Randolph wearily, "but I knew that. Oh, you needn’t think I took to him right off the bat." "Didn’t he tell you that he went away of his own desire—after a horrible scene with—with Alicia?" I felt the truth must be told the boy now. "Didn’t he tell you that I gave him money to go and that only recently I sent him more money to San Francisco, because he wanted to get back to the East?" "No," said the boy in wide-eyed amazement. "He said you had taken everything from him because of the mistake he’d made—and tried to keep him down. That’s what first began to get me. Oh, what’s the use, Uncle Ranny? It’s a hard thing to say, but I guess he’s pretty rotten, even if he is my father. He got me drunk to-night to do this—" he waved his hand heavily toward the desk. "Said there was some island he’d found where he wanted to raise copra or cocoanuts or something—end his days—-if he only had a little money—that’s why.—But what’s the use, Uncle Ranny," he went on in the same weary tones, "I’m through with him. I don’t care a curse about him now. What are you going to do with me?" A great tenderness for the boy stabbed at my heart. I longed to comfort him as I could comfort Laura or Jimmie. Was he not their brother and as much as they my child? Like a disease, misfortune and dishonor had suddenly attacked him. My breast was simmering with bitter self-reproach. "Come, Randolph," I put my arm about his shoulder. "Pull yourself together. We must live this business down. There’s your education to be thought of. You must finish, don’t you see?" "You mean—you’d give me another chance?" "Yes, Randolph," I answered huskily, "and still another." At that moment I felt I could have given him seventy-times seven. "Well, then," he answered, with the first gleam of interest I discerned in him, "will you let me go ahead and enlist?" "Enlist," I recoiled from that. "In the army, you mean? You are so young." "I mean in the navy—I want to do it, Uncle Ranny—I must do it—That’s the only way I can begin again. I can’t stay round where Alicia is." My heart went utterly out to the boy in his misery. I knew not what to say to him. The pangs of despised love! "Alicia has been your—" but it was futile to talk to him of Alicia.